Magda Saraiva

Expression of Emotions by a Service Robot: A Pilot Study

A successful Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) depends on the empathy that the robot has the capability of instantiating on the user, namely through the expression of emotions. In this pilot study, we examined the recognition of emotions being expressed by a service robot in a virtual environment (VE), by university students. The VE was a corridor, neutral in terms of context of use. The robot’s facial expressions, body movements, and displacement were manipulated to express eight basic emotions. Results showed that participants had difficulties in recognizing the emotions (33% of success). Also, results suggested that the participants established empathy with the robot. Further work is needed to improve the emotional expression of this robot, which aims to interact with hospitalized children.

Elimination of collaborative inhibition effect using the Method of Loci

BACKGROUND The disruption of retrieval strategies hypothesis (Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas, 1997) has been identified as the main reason for the occurrence of the collaborative inhibition effect. This study aims to test this hypothesis applying the same retrieval strategy to all participants. METHOD To accomplish this, we compared nominal and collaborative (pairs) performance in a serial recall task in two conditions: use of own strategy vs. use of the method of loci, in a classic experimental paradigm of collaborative memory. RESULTS Results revealed that endowing participants with the same strategy of coding and retrieval of information eliminates the collaborative inhibition effect. CONCLUSIONS This result provides evidence for the hypothesis of the retrieval strategies disruption. The method of loci proved to be an effective mnemonic by increasing the amount of recalled information, both in the nominal and collaborative recall, when the information has to be recalled in the order that was presented.

Influência da idade, desejabilidade social e memória na sugestionabilidade infantil

A sugestionabilidade infantil e influenciada pela capacidade de memoria, idade ou desejabilidade social. Este estudo teve como objetivo estudar estes fatores em tres grupos de criancas com idades de 5/6 anos, 8/9 anos e 10/11 anos. Para tanto procedemos a construcao de uma escala de avaliacao da sugestionabilidade infantil baseada na Escala de Sugestionabilidade de Gudjonsson (GSS; Gudjonsson, 1997). Os resultados obtidos revelaram que as criancas mais novas foram as mais sugestionaveis, fenomeno que parece estar associado ao elevado grau de desejabilidade social das suas respostas. Relativamente a memoria fonologica, verificamos que a sua menor amplitude esteve tambem relacionada com maior sugestionabilidade infantil. Sugere-se que as variaveis memoria e desejabilidade social sejam cuidadosamente consideradas no momento de obtencao do testemunho de criancas.

Relationship quality influences attitudes toward and perceptions of infidelity

This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho. Joana Arantes has been supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (IF/01298/2014). Andre Silva receives funding from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PD/BD/115906/2016). We thank Randolph Grace for his helpful comments. The raw data reported in this study are available upon request.

Custos e Benefícios de Recordar em Colaboração: Breve Revisão da Literatura

Apos anos de pesquisa sobre o funcionamento da memoria humana como um processo de armazenamento e recordacao individual de informacao, surgem cada vez mais estudos focados na compreensao da memoria como um processo tambem vivido em grupo: a memoria colaborativa. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo pretendeu, atraves de uma revisao da literatura, sintetizar algumas das questoes mais relevantes do estudo da memoria colaborativa. Para tal, apresentamos o paradigma experimental mais usado nesse tipo de estudos, bem como os custos e beneficios que resultam da partilha e recordacao de informacao em grupo. A redacao deste artigo permitiu-nos concluir que, apesar do numero crescente de estudos nessa area, ainda existem algumas lacunas, nomeadamente no que se refere a producao de falsas memorias, bem como acerca da real implicacao pratica do uso de diferentes tarefas de memoria.